Month: August 2014

Feel the pain

Posted on by kathiemm

Guest Post from the Steering Committee of Psychologists for Social Responsibility (PsySR)

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Today’s post is a statement from the Steering Committee of the Psychologists for Social Responsibility (PsySR), of which I am a member. As an organization focused on psychology’s contributions to peace and positive social change, PsySR is keenly aware of the profound psychological impact of living in a war zone, including the following:

 

  • Psychological distress in war zones is often as great as the physical suffering that receives more widespread attention. For some, including children, coping with issues of family separation, multiple losses, and bereavement can be even more unbearable than other health-related concerns.

 

  • People already under stress before an attack – from severe poverty, chronic exposure to harsh imposed restrictions, and past bloodshed – are likely to have stronger and more overwhelming psychological reactions to violence.

 

  • Prolonged fears of attack, powerful feelings of helplessness, and deep worries about family and community heighten the damaging psychological effects of life-threatening events and can contribute to ongoing cycles of violence.

 

  • The magnitude of psychological suffering in war zones can be mitigated somewhat by people’s immediate and continuing access to individual and family supports, along with broader efforts that are locally, culturally, and psychologically-informed.

 

As a result of the indiscriminate targeting of civilians, psychological suffering has overtaken communities across the Palestinian territories and Israel this summer. However, we believe that external financial support for community healing is particularly essential in Gaza. In our judgment, this is not only because Israeli forces have engaged in the disproportionate use of violence in recent weeks, including reported attacks on schools, hospitals, ambulances, and health professionals, but also because of the exceedingly difficult socioeconomic circumstances and the harsh and seemingly hopeless conditions brought about by the decades’ long occupation.

Ultimately, a just and lasting peace and a brighter future for Palestinians and Israelis alike will require that these psychological consequences and considerations receive serious and sustained attention.

With a special emphasis on vulnerable groups including children, women, and victims of torture and human rights violations, the Gaza Community Mental Health Programme (GCMHP) provides crucial and irreplaceable mental health services to thousands of Gaza residents. These services will be even more broadly and desperately needed in the days and months immediately ahead. Throughout its history, the GCMHP has also been firmly committed to nonviolent resistance and to working for a world where Palestinians and Israelis can live together in peace.

The Programme has suffered extensively from the fighting this past month, with several staff, including the director, suffering family losses. In times such as these, external aid can be important beyond the purely financial support by serving as an expression of caring and compassion from the outside world.

Organizing help for the GCMHP is one way that we, as psychologists and mental health providers, can counter the despair and hopelessness bred in all parties by this renewed outbreak of violence between Israel and Hamas. In so doing, we make a statement in support of human rights, mutual recognition and security, and a pathway to the reconciliation that must underlie a sustainable peace in this region.

Donations should be made by check payable to the Gaza Mental Health Foundation and mailed to the Gaza Mental Health Foundation, PO Box 380273, Cambridge, MA 02238. Please include your name, address, telephone number, and email address. 100% of your donation will be sent to GCMHP. Your donation is tax-deductible to the extent provided by section 501(c)(3) of the Internal Revenue Code.

For more information about this PsySR initiative, please email gazamentalhealth@psysr.org. A PDF version of this statement is available here.

   The Steering Committee of Psychologists for Social Responsibility

August 13, 2014

 

Tomorrow’s wars: Let’s stop them now.

Posted on by kathiemm
Battle_of_Giannitsa_(1912-11-01),_First_Balkan_War,_Greece; published in the US before 1923 and public domain in the US.

 

Part 2 in a two-part series by Dr. Majed Ashy

Leaders can use their power and authority for good or bad.  Unfortunately, some leaders promote moral disengagement by persuading the masses that the crimes of wars and terrorism are, among other things, essential, unavoidable, victimless, ways of preventing more evil, fully the responsibility of the other side, and will be the last war or act necessary to create peace.

The foot soldiers who carry out the fighting are led to believe that they are fighting for their country, race, religion, sect, tribe, peace, or whatever they are told the conflict is about—which may be something quite different from what they are told. For example, while spewing out rhetoric about patriotism and loyalty and faith, the leaders might actually be fighting over natural resources such as natural gas, gas pipelines routes, mines, or oil, drugs or drug smuggling routes, money, influence over their own people, regionally, or internationally. Or they may be seeking to obtain the votes of extremists in their group. Or they may be pursuing violence just to satisfy their own narcissistic needs or psychopathology.

 

On the other hand, the relationship between the leader and the masses can contribute to a lot of good. The grip of war and terror mongering leaders on ordinary people needs to be shaken, their intentions and motives need to be examined, and their strategies to manipulate and mobilize the masses and to fuel the conflicts need to be exposed and countered. The relationship between such leaders and the ordinary people in their domains are the main origin of all international and local wars and ills.

 

Such leaders have sometimes been deposed or convinced to end their love affairs with violence in the past, and this can happen again. The enforcement of the Hague and international law might convince some of these leaders to accept alternatives to violence and change the nature of their relationship with their people or followers.

Tomorrow’s Wars: A Work In Progress

Posted on by kathiemm

 

Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License Author= UN Security Council

 

This is the first in a new two-part series by  guest author Dr. Majed Ashy.

Often, the bloody destructive assaults known euphemistically as “armed conflicts”  grow out of the operation of at least three factors. Grievances, real or perceived, need to be present in the relationships of two or more sides. These grievances can be due to historical, social, political, racial, religious, economical, territorial, or other injustices that have not been addressed or are simply denied.

 A common second factor is the occurrence of an event with the power to ignite the conflict—e.g., the killing of an archbishop (impetus to World War I), the shooting down of an airplane with a top official (impetus to the Rwandan genocide).

 A third factor is the presence of leaders who will take advantage of the event in order to escalate the conflict and stimulate destructive emotions through their speeches, propaganda, appeals to deep instincts and fears, and use of historical and current symbols and analogies to whip people up into readiness to commit violence.

Another factor, probably less well recognized, is the rampant experiencing of armed conflict by children and adolescents.  The human brain is in a state of elasticity during the years up through adolescence. Various neurological developmental processes are influenced by environmental events. Stresses due to the trauma of war and violence, experienced and witnessed, have hormonal and other physiological consequences that affect various neuro-developmental processes. In my view, the wars of the past decades contributed to the brutality we witness today, and I believe that the wars of today are the factories that will produce the hate and brutality of the future. Unless we stop them.

 

 Majed Ashy, Ph.D. is an Assistant professor in psychology, Merrimack College and a Research fellow in psychiatry, DBPRP at McLean Hospital, Harvard Medical School.